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Originally posted by General Rak:
Hey Mac - Can I participate in your webstory?
Of course. Everything else there looks pretty good; the ship mods certainly qualify under rule #1. 
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Originally posted by Captain Skyblade:
Mac: I'll be happy to help you run the webstory, or just plain participate if that's all you need.
Another advantage to taking the minimalist approach is that it becomes very easy to run. All I have is a strictly political map, which might need updated once a day as systems change hands. I think I can handle it. So, if you want to participate, just pick a side.
Speaking of the map, I've finished a preliminary draft of it. Working on this, I'm trying to work out a balance between realism and as few rules as possible. The main issue to control here is fleet sizes and buildup. My current intention is to make this much more free form than past stories, but avoid the completely unrestricted chaos of BFS I - I don't think the anarchy will work as well with a bigger group. I also want to avoid using EV's default price structure, which is unbalanced for this sort of thing, nor do I particularly want to work out some kind of precise strength rating for each ship. So, what I'm thinking of heading for right now is scrapping credits per se entirely, and going to a system of economic and industrial units. (Note - economic units included primarily so that players can engage in economic warfare, or hiring mercs, or similar, otherwise I would have scrapped them altogehter. This is in keeping with trying to make this a true multi-dimensional story, rather than a war simulation.) My plan is to give ship classes a rating, and ships in that class cost x number of economic and political units. Basically, we're looking at fighters = 1, medium ships = 2, capital ships = 3. (Exception, Defender - they suck enough they would probably count as a half, so you get two for one) Economic units would be stored in the government as a whole, probably added every page or two - I'm still adding up some numbers on that. Industrial units, primarily for shipbuilding, though if someone else figures out some other use for them that's fine, would be stored by planets. So, to build ships, the fleet would have to linger for a post at a planet with sufficient industrial capacity. I'm not planning on any formal time for a planet to regenerate its industrial units, but keep it in line with rule one above - let's not be hitting the same system for it's full capacity twice in ten posts. This both encourages realism and keeps fleet sizes managable.
So, on my map, I've gone through and given every system provisional economic and industrial ratings. This has been somewhat subjective, but the main factors I considered were presense(arg - sp?) of a shipyard and tech level for industrial, and commodity prices, desc texts and a couple subjective modifiers (i.e. Sol got bonuses for being the Confed capital, being the human homeworld, and having a significant tourism industry, which is good because it would have gotten a 1 based strictly on commodities) for economic strength. I wouldn't mind if everyone takes a look and points out anything you think should be different. I also gave food exporters (based mainly on having low food prices) A dot or two for agriculture, with two dots designating a major feeder of the galaxy based on desc text.
Anyway, the map is (url="http://"http://home.attbi.com/~e-gamerguy1/evwebmap.gif")here(/url). Gray dots are industrial, green economic, and yellow agriculture. If a color doesn't show up, that designates a zero.
PS if anyone else has any aspect of certain systems they want to exploit and would like systems with certain characteristics marked in some way, let me know.
PPS I'm still looking for a name, ideas welcome.
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- Macavenger | e-mail: (url="http://"mailto:e-gamerguy1@attbi.com")mailto:e-gamerguy1@attbi.com(/url)e-gamerguy1@attbi.com
